


Rescue by Moonlight

by Sadmuse (Aleigh75)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 06:31:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4695719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aleigh75/pseuds/Sadmuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the Harry/Luna story that goes along with my story "The Sentence". It begins a few months before "The Sentence"...right after the Battle of Hogwarts. Harry is in a pretty dark place after killing Voldemort, and only one person seems to see that he may have saved the world, but now he needs someone to save him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescue by Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> I know I promised this story a while ago, but I've been kind of stuck on it. My muse was being really weird when I first started working on it, but she seems to have snapped out of it. The beginning isn't at all my usual style because of that, but it comes around. (I'm honestly not sure if that's really a good thing or a bad thing!)

_May 10, 1998_

Harry slipped through the back door of the Burrow, and carefully pulled it shut behind him, trying to avoid making a sound. There was a slight click, causing him to freeze for a moment, listening intently. Fortunately, the soft sound of muffled weeping drifting down from the upstairs windows didn’t waver. Letting out a soft sigh of relief, Harry pulled out his wand, and headed into the darkness. Glancing over his shoulder at the Burrow, he felt a twinge of guilt at leaving Ron and Hermione behind, but he just couldn’t stand another _second_ in that house. Molly’s grief...the entire family’s grief, but especially hers...was palpable. The air seemed too thick, more humid than it should be, as if all the tears the family had shed over the last week had actually changed the composition of the air in their house.

His lips had tasted like salt all week, but Harry hadn’t cried. At all. From the moment Voldemort fell, Harry had felt almost like he was in a trance, completely devoid of any real emotion. The only thing he really felt at all was a horrible tightness in his chest, which he honestly wasn’t sure was suppressed grief, or simply the after-effect of one of the many minor injuries he’d sustained during the battle. Madam Pomfrey had mentioned something about a cracked rib when he’d finally reluctantly reported to her the morning after the battle, but it certainly seemed like the pain should have faded by now.

When he reached the boundary of the Burrow’s protective wards, he paused for a moment. Sure, Voldemort was dead, and _most_ of his followers were either also deceased, or in captivity, but some of the more dangerous Death Eaters were still at large. He should probably stay within the perimeter, just to be safe. Or go back for Ron and Hermione. He glanced back over his shoulder, at the light in the attic bedroom where his best friends were currently holed up together with their grief...his for Fred, and hers partly for her parents, who she had learned could not be located in Australia. Sighing, Harry pulled out his wand, and stepped across the invisible line between relative safety and the unknown.

It was probably his imagination, but the air on the other side of the boundary seemed lighter. Fresher. Freer. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, he gingerly rubbed his chest, then took off in the direction of a nearby hill...the highest point for miles around. He’d been there once with Ron, ages ago...the first time he’d visited the Burrow. The lower part of the hill was shrouded in a rather thick forest, but If he remembered correctly, there was clearing at the top with a single large oak tree. The tree had one particular branch that dipped fairly low to the ground, forming a sort of curved seat where one could sit comfortably and look out at over the countryside below.

Or just escape from the sound of a mother’s heartbreak.

It had been excruciating to be around Molly this past week, but she, or rather Arthur, had insisted that Harry stay with them, as he had no where else to go. Harry couldn’t really argue that point. Hogwarts had been declared structurally unsound after the battle, and Grimmauld was, frankly, pretty disgusting. The only things that had made the old house even remotely hospitable before were Molly’s, and then Hermione’s, efforts to keep it clean, and the company he’d always had there. There was no way he could ask Ron and Hermione to stay there with him right now. They were miserable enough without having to wallow in layers of dust and filth. It occurred to him that he might be able to coerce Kreacher into actually performing his duties for once, especially now that he had avenged Regulus Black, but the prospect of listening to Hermione nag about the injustice of House-Elf ownership made him abandon that idea in a hurry.

With no other options, Harry had moved into the Burrow, taking Ron’s old bedroom. Ron himself had moved up to the attic, having evicted the ghoul on his first day back. Hermione was supposedly sharing a room with Ginny, but Harry knew that she was really spending most of her waking hours, and a good portion of each night, with Ron. Molly was too distraught to notice, and Arthur was too busy trying to take care of her and the house, and juggle a million new responsibilities at the Ministry to notice what any of the so-called “kids” were up to.

Except they weren’t kids anymore. Definitely not George, whom one would have been pushing it to describe thus even before the battle, but not Harry, Ron, Hermione, or even Ginny, either. Harry was pretty sure that not one student who had been present at Hogwarts eight days ago could ever be considered a child again, not even the first years who had left before the real fighting began.

Harry wasn’t sure that he had _ever_ been a kid. He’d been trying fruitlessly to remember just one joyous, carefree moment without being acutely aware of the weight of the world on his shoulders. Even before he’d learned the truth about his life...about his parents and Voldemort...his aunt and uncle had never allowed him to just be a child. There had always been endless chores, endless yelling, and always that goddamn cupboard. They’d never, for one second, let him forget how “generous” they’d been, bringing him into their home after his parents were killed. He wondered what it was like to Just. Be. A. Kid.

He was still mulling it over when he reached the top of the hill, and the relative sanctuary of the tree. Letting out a soft sigh of relief, he plopped down on the low hanging branch and gazed out over the darkened countryside before him. To his left, he could just make out the light in the Burrow’s attic window, peeking above the trees that surrounded the bottom of the hill. Directly ahead were the lights of Ottery St. Catchpole, twinkling with the familiar, sterile gleam that came with electric lighting. A few windows glowed with the telltale flickering warmth that was only given off by candles or oil lamps, giving away the locations of the magical residents of the mixed village. He’d never had time to really consider the logistics of wizards living in such close proximity to muggles before. He wondered now what the muggle inhabitants thought of their wizard neighbors...did they think they were just eccentric? Too poor to afford electricity?

“They’re under a glamour,” a soft voice to his right startled him so badly he nearly fell off the branch.

Squinting into the darkness, he drew his wand from where he’d stuck it up his sleeve and thrust it in front of him, aiming in the general direction he thought the voice had come from...a clump of large bushes on the far side of the hilltop. “Who’s there?!” he demanded angrily, annoyed at having his first real moment of privacy in days disrupted almost as soon as it had begun. “Show yourself!”

At first there was no answer, then the leaves on the left hand side of the clump rustled noisily. Harry raised his wand, pointing it at the heart of the disturbance. “Ugh...sorry...can you give me a hand, Harry?” the voice requested meekly as a pale, slender hand appeared near the bottom of the bushes.

“Luna?” Harry blurted, stepping forward and shoving his wand back in his sleeve as he finally recognized the voice. He reached for her hand, but hesitated. Ever since he’d killed Voldemort, he felt dirty somehow, and whenever he touched anyone; it felt like he was infecting them. He should probably talk to someone about that, he realized absently. Giving himself a mental shake, he grabbed Luna’s hand and tugged, but she didn’t budge. “What are you doing in there?” he asked, trying to keep his discomfort (and his lingering irritation over being disturbed) from his voice. He grunted with effort as he pulled even harder.

“I...ow...I was looking for nifflers, but I got stuck!” Luna squeaked as she moved an inch or two then seemed to be jerked back by an opposing force. “Do you have your wand, Harry? I dropped mine somewhere and it wouldn’t come when I called it.”

Harry released her hand in order to get out his wand again, fighting the bizarre urge to cast a cleansing spell on her. “ _Accio Luna’s wand_!” he called. There was a flurry of motion in the bush, then a small cracking sound before Luna’s wand burst free, smacking into the palm of his free hand. “Erm...how badly stuck _are_ you?” he asked, squinting into the foliage as he stuck her wand in his back pocket for the time being.

“Maybe if you cast a little light on the subject?” Luna suggested softly. He frowned, but she didn’t seem to be teasing him.

“ _Lumos maxima_!” he exclaimed, mentally smacking himself on the forehead for not thinking of casting the spell earlier. A bright bluish glow instantly lit up the end of his wand, and the surrounding area, allowing him to see a lot more clearly than he could by the light of the full moon filtering through the leaves of the ancient oak.

“Ow...” Luna squinted against the light, holding her hand in front of her face. “Too bright...”

Harry frowned, noticing several scratches on her face, hand and arm. “How long have you been stuck in there?”

“Since this morning,” she answered casually, lowering her hand as her eyes adjusted. “I was looking for my father’s necklace...you know...the one with the Hallows symbol?” she waited for his acknowledging nod before continuing. “He couldn’t find it when he was getting dressed this morning. We’re staying in a tent until our house is rebuilt, and I think some NIfflers got in last night and took it. Rumor has it there’s an entrance to one of their burrows somewhere on this hill. I thought I saw one run into this bush, so I crawled in after it, but I got stuck, and then I dropped my wand...” she trailed off, shrugging sheepishly.

It was all Harry could do not to laugh. Rubbing his hand over his face to stifle a chuckle, he finally got himself under control enough to ask, “Alright, well, do you think I should try using a spell to cut you loose?”

“That might anger the nifflers,” Luna mused, tapping her lips with her free hand. Harry waited a bit impatiently until she finally sighed resignedly. “Yes, I think it’s the only way. I would try ‘ _diffindo_ ,’ but I can’t quite see where my foot is trapped...” she craned her neck around, peering further into the bush. “Can you see it? My left ankle seems to be caught on something.”

Harry shoved his wand into the bush and leaned forward, moving his wand slowly over Luna’s torso and down her leg until he found the spot where a thick vine from the bush was wound tightly around Luna’s left ankle. “I don’t think this was an accident...it looks like the bush was deliberately wrapped around your ankle...”

“It was probably the nifflers. I suspect they possess a bit of magic. They probably set a trap to guard the entrance to their burrow,” Luna explained airily. “Like I said, ‘ _diffindo_ ’ will probably work. Just try not to damage too much of the bush. There’s a family of bowtruckles living in the oak tree, and they might get upset if you start slashing away all willy nilly.”

Harry glanced at the tree, wincing. Not particularly keen on the idea of having his eyes scratched out by the notoriously territorial little creatures, he leaned closer to the vine holding Luna’s foot and whispered, “ _Diffindo_ ,” putting the bare minimum of power into the spell needed to cut his friend free. The vine split and fell away from Luna’s leg, and she let out a sigh of relief, immediately squirming out of the dense foliage as if she expected it to pull her back in. A fear that was probably warranted, Harry realized upon further thought.

“Thank you, Harry!” she exclaimed breathlessly, accepting his reluctantly proffered hand and letting him pull her to her feet. “Oh! Ow...” she murmured, stumbling a bit when she put her weight on her left foot.

“Are you okay?” Harry asked, putting his arm around her waist without thinking about it, and leading her over to sit on the oak’s lowest branch. “My spell didn’t hurt you, did it?” he asked, handing her her wand.

“No, Harry,” she chuckled lightly, lowering herself carefully onto the natural bench and beginning to rub her foot and ankle. “My foot is asleep, that’s all. Thank you so much for helping me. I knew my father would come looking for me sooner or later, but I don’t expect him back from London until sometime tomorrow.” She looked up at him, smiling gratefully. “I’m really glad you happened to come along. I probably would have had a rather unpleasant night if you hadn’t. It was quite a relief when I heard you talking to yourself,” she said seriously, sounding more focused than usual. Harry blushed, not having realized until just then that he had been thinking out loud. “I just wish I could have found the necklace. It’s very important to my father...my mother gave it to him shortly before she died.” She sighed heavily and lowered her head, ostensibly to check on her ankle, but Harry was pretty sure he heard her sniffling quietly.

He rubbed his neck, feeling a bit guilty that he’d been so annoyed to find her there earlier. All things considered, she was having a rougher time of things than he was. He couldn’t believe he’d somehow forgotten that he, Ron and Hermione had destroyed the Lovegood’s home back in December, and he made a mental note to see if he could help with the rebuilding. “Lemme try to find it. I’m pretty good with summoning spells...” he mumbled, not feeling very confident despite his words. Walking back over to the bush, he cast a few more gentle ‘ _diffindo_ ’ charms, carefully clearing a path into the thicket. Holding his still glowing wand close to the ground, he searched around until he found some small footprints that he thought might belong to the niffler. After clearing a bit more brush, he found a hole in the ground beneath the roots of a particularly large bush. “I think I found their den!” he whispered loudly over his shoulder. Rubbing his chin, he tried to remember if nifflers were aggressive, or had nasty claws or fangs. All he could recall was Hagrid warning the class that they tended to bite anyone wearing jewelry, presumably because they wanted it for themselves. Deciding to take his chances, he stuck his wand in the entrance of the small tunnel and said, “ _Accio Deathly Hallows necklace_!” as decisively as possible.

At first nothing happened, but then he heard an alarmed sort of squealing sound from deep inside the tunnel. This was followed by a few more squeaks, growing closer and closer. A metallic jingling sound soon joined the squeaks, as well as some soft scrabbling noises. Finally, the necklace appeared, the hallows symbol hovering in midair, and coming straight toward Harry. A very indignant niffler held the other end of the chain between its teeth, glaring at Harry, and emitting slightly muffled growls and whimpers. Harry quickly grabbed the necklace, shaking the little creature off before it could bite him. The niffler let out a heart-broken sounding wail and plopped down in the dirt, whimpering and whining pathetically. Harry felt a twinge of guilt, but quickly thought of a solution. “Hang on little guy...” he mumbled, shoving the necklace deep in his pocket, he pulled out a galleon and quickly transfigured it into an exact replica of the necklace. “Here...you can have this one...no sentimental value there,” he murmured, holding the copy out to the angry niffler. It raised what Harry supposed passed for its eyebrows at him, and extended its long snout to sniff the necklace suspiciously. “Take it...it’s all yours,” Harry urged, holding the necklace a bit closer, still wary of the creature’s teeth. Apparently making up its mind, the niffler lunged forward, snatched the necklace between it’s teeth, whirled and disappeared back down its tunnel.

“That was very nice of you, Harry.” He jumped at Luna’s words. He hadn’t noticed her standing up and walking up behind him.

“He looked so sad...” Harry shrugged, feeling a bit embarrassed, even though he knew Luna, of all of his friends, was the least likely to make fun of his behavior.

“He was. Most wizards wouldn’t have cared, though. Hagrid would approve,” Luna smiled affectionately at him and patted him on the shoulder. She took a step away and looked down at her left foot, grimacing slightly.

“How is it?” Harry asked, reaching for her arm but pulling back at the last second. He blinked when he realized he’d put his arm around her earlier without even thinking about it.

“It’s a bit stiff, but I think it will be alright,” Luna looked back up at him with a sheepish smile. “I hate to ask, but do you think you could-”

“Help you get home?” Harry finished for her. Suppressing his discomfort, he reminded himself sternly that he’d already touched her several times, and she was none the worse for it. Gathering his nerve, he mumbled, “Hold on...” and wrapped his arm around her again. Once he was sure she was ready, he turned on his heel and apparated to her house, letting her go as quickly as possible without seeming rude.

“Oh. That was easier than I expected. I didn’t know you could apparate, Harry,” Luna murmured, looking a little bit green from the effect of the side-along.

“Kingsley granted me a license as soon as they made him Minister. He said it was the least he could do since I didn’t get to take the test last summer,” Harry explained with a shrug.

“Hmmm,” Luna hummed.

Harry couldn’t tell if this was in agreement or disapproval, and began to feel defensive. “Well, I was a bit busy, hunting for horcruxes and trying to save the world and all. I took the class with everyone else, I just didn’t get to take the test. I would have passed...”

“I know that, Harry!” Luna exclaimed, a bit more forcefully than usual. “I wasn’t criticising. I’m just nervous about taking the test myself in a few weeks. I haven’t had a lot of practice.”

“You’re...oh, right...you’re seventeen now.” Harry grimaced. She’d spent her birthday in the dungeon beneath Malfoy Manor.  “I forgot all about it. I’m sorry. Happy belated birthday?”

Luna shot him the sort of look people normally reserved for _her_. “That’s alright, Harry. Like you said, you’ve been a little busy,” she said, looking amused. Growing more serious, she put her hands on her hips and looked him over consideringly. “You worry too much about everyone else, Harry Potter. You need to learn to care about _yourself_. You’re worth a lot more to the world than you think you are. Killing Voldemort was _not_ why you were put on this earth.” All traces of ditziness had completely disappeared from her tone and attitude, and Harry stared at her confusedly. “You don’t even believe me, do you? What did those people do to you?” She clicked her tongue disapprovingly and walked closer, reaching up to caress his cheek. When he instinctively shrank away from her touch, she sighed and lowered her hand, but stared into his eyes until he thought he might scream. He found that he couldn’t look away, and wondered uncomfortably if she knew legilimency. It wouldn’t surprised him. She finally looked away after a minute or two, and he lowered his head in relief. “You’re worth a lot more than you think, Harry Potter,” she repeated. “I guess I’ll just have to prove it to you.” With that, she turned and walked over to a rather threadbare looking tent set up near the foundation of her ruined house. “Thank you again, Harry,” she murmured, sounding more like her usual self as she held up her father’s necklace. He’d almost forgotten about it in his confusion over her behavior.

“Right. You’re welcome,” he mumbled, nodding awkwardly before she ducked inside the tent. Rubbing his forehead, mostly out of force of habit, he shrugged to himself, mumbling, “Nutters...” before apparating back to the Burrow. He was suddenly too exhausted, both mentally and physically, to return to the oak on the hill. For the first time all week, his chest didn't hurt, and he felt like he might be able to get a good night’s sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry this chapter is sort of short. It's almost more of a prologue than a real chapter, but since the next one will pick up the next day, it's not really a prologue so I didn't call it one. 
> 
> This story is causing me all sorts of grief and I haven't even really gotten going...


End file.
